From The Middle East...
Mideast-bound
Rice
rejects quick truce, seeks broad solution
Washington—The
United States remains opposed to an immediate Middle East ceasefire
because it would not end the threat posed by Hezbollah militants,
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Friday as she prepared for a
trip to the region.
'A ceasefire would be a false
promise if it simply returns us to the status quo,' Rice told
reporters, 'That would be a guarantee of future violence.'
'We do seek an end to the
current violence, and we seek it urgently,' Rice said. 'More than that,
we also seek to address the root causes of that violence so that a real
and endurable peace can be established'.
'The world may be seeing 'the
birth pains of a new Middle East,' she told reporters in
Washington.
www.monstersandcritics.com 7/21/06
Bush
calls for
sustainable ceasefire
Washington—US President
George W Bush on Tuesday said that a sustainable ceasefire must be
reached to end the conflict in Lebanon as US Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice was in Israel outlining a proposal for an
international peacekeeping force.
'We want to address the root
causes of the violence in the area,' he said. 'And, therefore, our
mission and our goal is to have a lasting peace,
not a temporary peace, but something that lasts.
www.monstersandcritics.com 7/25/06
Iran
warns of
repercussions if US causes problems
TEHRAN—Iranian
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said today that if the US chose
to create "problems" for Iran in a nuclear dispute, such a move would
have repercussions elsewhere.
"If some are after creating
problems, they should know that any problem created for Iran in the
region will harm the interests of everyone," he said in a televised
speech to a rally in northwest Iran.
"Americans want to create
disputes, while everyone is trying to keep the atmosphere calm, to
continue the constructive, fair and legal talks to resolve the
(nuclear) issue," he said.
He told the US not to
"interfere" in the dispute, saying it could be resolved in
talks with the European Union (EU).
www.businessday.co.za
Rice
Calls for New Middle
East
Visiting US Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice Tuesday called for a new Middle East, the
same phrase former US President Bill Clinton used when promoting the
Oslo peace plans in the 1990s.
"It is time for a new Middle
East," she said. "It is time to say to those who don't want a different
kind of Middle East that we will prevail. They will
not." She spoke with leaders of the Israeli government and the
Palestinian Authority (PA). Whereas President Clinton's plan was based
on proposed agreements between Israel and the Palestine Liberation
Organization headed by Yasser Arafat, Secretary Rice said an
end to violence must be conditional.
American officials are not
interested in returning to the Middle East to repeat current efforts to
stop terrorists from disrupting a ceasefire, she explained.
Tuesday, July 25, 2006
Threat
of wider Mideast
war grows
Israel's escalating incursion
into Lebanan—with bombing attacks on Beirut's airport and a
naval blockade— could turn its border fight with
militant Islamists into a regional war that Israel is openly warning
might lead to Syria, and beyond that to Iran.
Israel now is fighting not with
Palestinian and Arab nations, as in the past, but with the forces of
radical Islam.
And the Israelis are bluntly
saying that the blame for the violence by those forces lies in large
measure with the governments of Syria and Iran for giving them support
and encouragement — an assertion that could put the U.S. and
Israel in diverging paths in the crisis.
"The real masterminds 'behind
these acts' are in Tehran and Damascus," Daniel Ayalon, Israel's
ambassador to Washington, said Thursday. The international community
"needs to call Iran to task," he said.
In his public comments Thursday,
President Bush laid blame for the flare-up firmly on Hezbollah and
Hamas, while cautioning Israel not to do anything that would
weaken the "fragile democracy" in Lebanon.
The situation also will test
whether the U.S. and Israel see eye-to-eye on how to handle Syria and,
more importantly, Iran. Thursday, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice
echoed the Israeli assertion that those two nations bear responsibility
for the unrest, saying they were encouraging the attacks and, in the
case of Syria, "sheltering the people who are perpetrating these acts."
The U.S., Ms. Rice added, isn't
going to "try to judge every single act" the Israelis make. When asked
if the fighting might spread to other countries, she said she doesn't
intend "to speculate on apocalyptic scenarios."
Mr. Ayalon, the Israeli
ambassador, declined to respond to the question of whether Israel would
itself attack Iran for allegedly masterminding Hezbollah's activities.
But a number of U.S. lawmakers said they believe the Bush
administration needs to be taking an increasingly aggressive stance to
prevent Tehran from expanding its influence in the Middle East.
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